Call For Papers

How to Submit

The deadline for submission to EVOLANG XIII (Brussels, Belgium, April 14-17, 2020) is September 1, 2019 has been extended to September 15, 2019. You can submit to EvoLang XIII via EasyChair. Please carefully read the guidelines set out below - and further details within the provided submission templates - to prepare your submission. Submissions that do not adhere to the guidelines could be rejected without review. If you have a problem with your submission, please email scientific-committee@evolang.org.

Submissions may be in any relevant discipline, and should aim to make clear their own substantive claim relating to relevant, current scientific literature in the field of language evolution. Submissions which do not have clear relevance to the field may be rejected without review.

Submission Format

Please do not change the margins, line spacing, font size, etc. in the provided templates. Submissions may be in the form of long papers (6-8 pages excluding references) or abstracts (2 pages excluding references). For 2-page abstracts, use the same template as for the long papers, omitting the abstract section and using the body text for the entire submission (as such, there is no need to include the "abstract" section in 2-page abstracts).

EVOLANG features talks (20 minutes plus discussion) as well as poster sessions. Submissions are limited to one first-authored talk and one first-authored poster per person. There is no limit on second authored submissions. When submitting, you will be asked to indicate whether each submission is to be considered for inclusion as a talk, a poster, or as either of the two.

Upon acceptance authors will be encouraged to sign a CC BY ND license, which allows for free reuse of the work as long as the original authors are attributed. Accepted and licensed submissions will be published in online proceedings to appear before the start of the conference, and hard copy conference proceedings (with ISBN) printed to order.

Double-blind peer review

The review process is double-blind: authors will not be told who reviews their paper and reviewers will not be told who the authors of the papers are. To ensure this process goes smoothly, initial submissions should be anonymous. Please keep in mind the following guidelines for keeping your paper anonymous:

Do not include the names and affiliations of authors in the paper

Names and affiliations will be added after the paper has been reviewed and accepted. However, keep in mind that names and affiliations will take up space. We suggest that authors include anonymous placeholders for names and affiliations to avoid problems with page limits (e.g. “AUTHOR BBBBB & AUTHOR CCCCC”).

If the paper is accepted, the authors will be required to submit a camera-ready version with author names, affiliations, and acknowledgements included. At the submission stage, please make sure that the work will adhere to the space limitations once these changes are made.

Make sure not to reveal the identity of the authors indirectly

This can include the following steps:

Use third person to refer to previous work by the authors. e.g. instead of “As we have previously shown, language is a complex system (Jones, 2012)” use “As was previously shown, language is a complex system (Jones, 2012)”, or more simply “Language is a complex system (Jones, 2012)”.

Do not eliminate essential self-references or other references but limit self-references only to papers that are relevant for those reviewing the submitted paper.

Make sure figures do not contain any affiliation related identifier.

Given the small size of the field it may not be possible to completely prevent reviewers from guessing the identity of the authors, but please make every effort to keep submissions anonymous.

Supplementary materials

There will be some support for online supplementary materials. Reviewers will not evaluate the supplementary materials, so all information necessary to understand and evaluate the submission should be included in the main paper or abstract. However, authors are encouraged to make data or code available for the final publication. All supplementary materials should be submitted within a single zip file, which should also include a readme file describing the contents. Supplementary materials should be referenced in the main text (e.g. “see supplementary materials”).